This post is part of the Poured Forth Blog Post Series: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9
Poured Forth is also available as a book: Poured Forth
Shortly after earning my Ph.D. in Music Composition, I began to take stock of what I might do with my free time since I was no longer writing a dissertation night and day. I decided the best way to serve the Lord with my creativity was to monetize it in as many ways as possible, then give all the money away.
My first line of attack was my music. I was a pretty good amateur programmer, and the music engraving software Sibelius had a built-in programming language. After several weeks of work, I figured out a way to “autogenerate” music that would conform to the playing ranges (how high and low they play) of various instruments. I quickly realized the profitability potential of this.
By entering any music just once, I could use my script to create multiple arrangements. For example, I could enter a hymn or Christmas carol or scale exercise one time, then click a button, run my script, and come up with versions of that music for flute, clarinet, oboe, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and on and on. I could then sell those arrangements online directly, or give them away free on a site with ads that would earn money—money that I could give away to ministries. (Perhaps I would keep some of the money also, I thought, since there would be so much.)
Soon I was spending many hours on this project. I created hundreds of scale sheets and arrangements, then created simplified versions I would give away for free on my new website. The website would need ads, so I spent many hours figuring out how to run Google ads on my site in the most optimized way.
Soon the ad management was demanding most of my time and effort on my burgeoning free sheet music website. I realized that I could purchase Google ads that would bring people to my site, a certain percentage of whom would then click on ads that would make money.
It was complicated. How many ads should I purchase? What was the optimum amount to make sure I made the most money? Where should the ads be placed on the page? How could I structure the site so that the free sheet music would get listed organically in search results for free sheet music?
This process went on for months, maybe years. Multiple times a day, I would log into my Google AdSense page to see how many clicks I had and how much money I had earned that day. At first, it seemed to be going well. I was netting several dollars a day with no additional work! All I had to do was grow that by purchasing more clicks and adding more free sheet music. This could work!
But eventually I grew weary of the process. Google is not stupid; there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. As time went on, it became clear that purchasing clicks to get people to click on a free sheet music site was not going to be my path to making money with my creative talents. Eventually I quit purchasing clicks. The site continued to get visitors from search results, and I made a few cents a day on it, but the focus of my attention moved on.
Selling the arrangements directly worked a bit better. Using my script, I was able to create many Christmas carol and hymn arrangements. Of course, I only arranged public domain music, because I knew I could then sell it without having to pay any royalties to the original composers. After building up my catalog, I was quite excited one Christmas season when I made nearly a thousand dollars from arrangement sales! That was a good start, but it still didn’t seem like the best path to monetize my gifts.
I am also a photographer, and by this point I had some photos from a trip to Hawaii. Perhaps I could monetize those pictures somehow, then use that income stream to advance God’s Kingdom (while providing some for our family as well, of course). I quickly fell down another rabbit hole.
My first attempt was to sell the photos directly. I spent countless hours figuring out how to upload the photos to a photo-selling service where people could pay for poster-sized prints of them. I set the prices at around $50 per print—people would surely pay that for great photo art for their wall, right? The whole process took weeks: sizing the image files, uploading them, writing the descriptions, setting up the storefront, and on and on. At last I finished and waited for the money to flow in.
It never did. I never sold a single photo.
Perhaps combining my photos with my knowledge of Google Ads would be the ticket. Surely with all my great photos, I could create an amazing Hawaii tourist website, right? And where there’s a great website, there’s a great ad revenue stream. This launched yet another huge project. This time I would do it right. This time the income stream would be dependable—and substantial.
I decided to hire my good friend who made his living as a website database programmer. He brought in a graphic designer to create logos, banners, and the site layout. I wrote the text copy for hundreds of tourist destinations in Hawaii. We spent several thousand dollars on the professional website design and the graphic designer. Actually the amount I spent on the project was more than all the money I had earned so far from all my other projects. It didn’t matter though, because once I got the income stream going from all the ad revenue, those several thousand dollars would seem like nothing.
Can you guess how this ended up? Of course, the site got very few visitors. I am not the first person to think of making a website for Hawaiian tourists; large corporations with teams of online marketing experts were already fighting hard for that traffic. For all my efforts, the site never earned more than a few cents a day, on average. At least this time I had the sense not to pay for advertising on top of it all!
I began to wonder if my drive to monetize, monetize, monetize was misguided. I had not created anything new in years; all my thoughts and efforts were poured into doing everything possible to squeeze money out of my creative “products” rather than creating anything new. After all the effort and sacrifice, I was really no closer to coasting on passive income streams derived from my art.
You may be saying, “Ah, I see. He’s a failure at making a go of it with his music, poetry, and art photos, so he decided to just give it away to make himself feel better. I am (or will be) successful, so I don’t need to be so desperate as to give things away. My stuff (music or books or poetry or paintings or photos or sermons or whatever) is actually good, so mine will make (or now makes) money.”
Perhaps.
The trouble with that hypothesis is that it leaves someone out of the equation: God. You see, this entire journey I was walking closely with the Lord. My wife and I were praying, worshipping, and serving regularly in our church. We were partnering with missionaries and ministries and giving away significantly more than ten percent of our income. I was teaching myself Greek and Hebrew to read the Bible in the original languages.
And yet, none of my business plans succeeded. There is exactly one reason none of my efforts worked: God Himself slammed every door in my face. His plans are better than our plans.
In chapter 28 of The Screwtape Letters, Lewis writes that when we become prosperous, when our plans are profitable and successful, we believe we are finding our way in the World when in fact the World is working its way into us. As a rule, the price of being financially successful as a creator is loss of control over your work. Publishers, distributors, and music companies usually take control of the copyright, and the creator then takes a back seat. If you have not been “successful” with your work, thank the Lord that you probably still have control to keep, sell, or give it away as you feel led.
On the other hand, you might have had incredible financial success with your creations. Perhaps you are a bestselling author of Christian books or a musician whose music creates an income stream worth millions of dollars. You might be at the head of a powerful publishing firm or a Christian music distributor with control of thousands of copyrights and income streams in the millions. Or you could be a very successful Christian influencer with an audience of millions and substantial passive income online.
To you I say this: God is in control of your story as much as mine, and God has raised you up for a purpose. The Lord humbles, and the Lord exalts. Be open to His voice. God is stronger than contracts and business obligations. Keith Green had to be released from a contract with Sparrow Records before he could freely give away his third album. Ask God to show you what you need to do, and once He gives you peace about what to do, He will show you how to do it. The what of God’s calling always precedes the how. That’s the walk of faith for all of us.
Interlude 2: BibleProject
You’ve probably heard of BibleProject. Since 2014, they have posted over 300 videos to YouTube. With nearly 5 million subscribers and almost half a billion video views as of early 2025, odds are good that you’ve run into their work.
The BibleProject website recounts their history. Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, who were roommates at Multnomah University in Oregon, decided to work together to help people understand the Bible while avoiding misunderstandings. Mackie holds a degree in theology as well as a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, while Collins has a BA in Bible and Theology and extensive experience in video production and design. The BibleProject website does not say how many people they employ, but it does list eight executives on their leadership team.
For such a large organization, with so many projects underway and such vast reach online, the note at the bottom of every page of their website stands out:
“Everything we make is available for free because of a generous community of supporters.”
Incredibly, BibleProject gives away everything they create for free. It doesn’t matter whether you can afford to pay them or not; there is no obligation or expectation whatsoever to pay them anything when you watch their videos. Their YouTube channel is not monetized, and you won’t see advertising plastered all over their videos. How can they afford to do this?
BibleProject is “crowdfunded.” As of early 2025, BibleProject has over 48,000 people supporting their work financially, with an average monthly gift of $40 per month. So in the BibleProject model, people who are searching receive the ministry they need without hindrance or distraction, and people who are ready and able to partner financially get the eternal rewards of serving the Lord by joining in His work.
BibleProject has to trust the Lord to speak to His people to provide for the substantial expenses of running such a large ministry, and their partners give out of love for God and His message, without expecting to receive anything back in this life. Both the ministry and the financial partners grow in faith, and God alone gets the glory.
This post is part of the Poured Forth Blog Post Series: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9
Poured Forth is also available as a book: Poured Forth
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